"Truth Never Damages A Cause That is Just"–Ghandi

Daily Archives: December 10, 2015

I think I complained in an earlier post about how much I hated anticipating nervous events.

Consider this Part Two.

Whenever I get that little voice in my head telling me “Don’t you see how nice it is at home? Just stay home tonight. One class isn’t going to kill you,” as if I haven’t skipped multiple classes this semester, I put myself to sleep. I’ll lay down for five, six, seven, eight, nine . . . ten . . .eleven hours today I think it was and just sleep.

If I wake up, I force myself back to sleep.

Because when I’m awake I have one of two options: 1) Ruminate on all the bad things that could happen in class tonight or 2) Try not to ruminate on all the bad things that could happen in class tonight and sequentially end up ruminating on all the bad things that could happen in class tonight.

So I say fuck it and go to sleep.

When I woke up today that little voice was very loud–he often is–and I almost went back to sleep. Instead, I pulled myself out of bed and into the shower and somehow made it out of the house in less than thirty minutes. That’s a new record. I got to my campus in twenty minutes. That’s also a record considering I leave in the middle of rush hour traffic.

Of course no one was in the class when I walked through the door so my professor told me about a woman he’d spent the last two hours talking with who’d read his book and who’d asked her to make sure some indigenous portions in her own book were accurate.

He also gave me a paper with scholarships on it for writing that I’m going to look through this week and consider applying for. I don’t really care about the money I just want the recognition. It’s always nice to have a ego confidence boost as a writer.

Anyway, I didn’t say much in the class discussion tonight, I rarely do unless forced, but in the smaller group I found myself able to speak a little freer. I still didn’t say everything I could of, there were a few words bouncing around on my tongue itching to get out but my brain wasn’t sure if they were right and so it 86’d them from the menu. As usual.

Tonight I just didn’t have the energy to remind myself that when discussing literature it really doesn’t matter if you’re right or wrong, just as long as you get some ideas out in the open for people to mull over. It’s like the math test where there are several ways to do one thing but ultimately you come to the same type of answer.

Anyway, turns out the answer I was going to say was right. Go figure.

Of course it was; who am I kidding? I’m a genius.

Sarcasm is healthy.

Regardless I’m going to count tonight as a success. Even though most of the talking I did was completely unrelated to the book, I don’t even give a shit anymore at least I opened my mouth.

It’s curious how the people I’m supposed to be close with, my other family members perhaps even my boyfriend’s family, are the ones I have the hardest time speaking with. Even one-on-one I have more trouble speaking with any of them than I do with some stranger on the street.

I’m pretty sure that’s due to judgement. If the stranger judges me, fine, I won’t see him again to read it in his expression or hear it in his voice. If my family or someone else’s family judges me, I have to face them often and see it and it’s a constant reminder I’m not like them.

I feel as if they remind themselves I’m not like them as much as I remind myself I’m not like them.

I’m still figuring out what my social limits are. Not the limits set by my anxiety but the limits set by my own urges. I do like talking with people, I sometimes don’t shut up. I prefer alone time. I need to find a balance. Just as with everything in life, I need to find a balance.

We were talking about in class tonight the separation of people today from reality. There’s a weird kind of illusion over society, over people’s understanding about life which is the reason Donald Trump and Ben Carson actually have supporters. It’s the reason your doctor tells you to take medication without further inspection. It’s the reason there are so many clinical disorders in the DSM. It’s the reason many psychologists don’t take into consideration your background or your ancestry. It’s the reason most people think you need to “let go” and “forget” the past.

Stupid.

How are you going to forget something that is responsible for the way you are today? You might as well forget who you are. Saying it happened and it’s over with isn’t acceptance, do people understand that? Saying it happened and learning to carry it with you for the remainder of your life, that’s acceptance. If you can’t do that then sorry, your anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications aren’t going to help. And don’t blame your doctor and don’t blame the medications–it’s not their fault you don’t understand.

I just realized I denoted the little voice in my head as “he”early on in this post. I do that. I don’t hear voices, besides the ones that shout at me when I’m just waking up or really tired and trying to fall asleep. You know, the normal ones. At least the internet says it’s normal. What’s normal again? Oh yeah, everything’s normal and nothing is normal. So I’m normal.

I know I can’t be the only one in this world who has several different personalities within them they discuss things with in their head.

Stop giving me that look, you do it too.

These aren’t separate people, they’re all me. I know they are because . . . I’m me. They’re the reason I love imagining characters in my writing because a lot of them are characters in my writing. They’re the reason I get nervous letting people read my fiction because they’re reading my soul. I don’t want a critique on my soul.

I denote the rest of me that are separate portions of myself as “he”. Don’t know why, I just always have.

One is just pure rage. He’s the one who wants to smash your face in or break the door or hit you with my car because you’re a bicyclist with a nasty ego who rides over the white line like I need to give a shit about your space when you clearly have plenty of room within the white line. That’s why the white line is there. I don’t hear from him very often anymore because I don’t let myself. On occasional I’ll punch a door or wall and then I feel better and don’t need him anymore.

Another is the thinker. Just sits and thinks and thinks and thinks and he’s the one I go to when I need some serious philosophical concepts and spiritual concepts. He’s the one that connects all the rest of mes into the spiritual world.

Convinced I’m a loon yet? No? Good. I’d have to kill you if you did.

Another is . . . I don’t know what he is yet. He pops out randomly sometimes and he’s the one who’s obsessed with the serial killers and “human nature” and he’s also the most truthful part of me. He’s the one who knows Human Rights are constructed by society. Were he his own person, he’d probably murder you just to try it because why the hell not? Luckily he’s very good friends with my conscience, who I’ve spoken with in a few dreams before, and my personal morality so he won’t be killing anyone any time soon.

He’s the one who pushed me into psychiatry. When he senses a violation of life on the basis of stupidity, he makes me do his dirty work.

Murder is way too much work anyway.

Prison looks uncomfortable.

The Soap is too slippery.

Plus the rest of me doesn’t want to live with that for the rest of my life. All the Donald Trumps in the world couldn’t distract me from myself if I’d killed someone.

You do all know that’s what he is right? A distraction from all the poverty and racism and all the other issues America does a shit job of confronting. He’s just a distraction.

That’s some insight to my brain. There’s a lot going on up here. No I don’t have DID, no I don’t hear voices, no personalities don’t take control of my body. That’s just how my brain sees itself, it always has. These people in my head have grown with me. They’re in my stories and they’re my reality.

Anxiety sucks. I go to the people within myself when I need company and support.

If I had to choose my largest complaint about social anxiety, I’d have to say the way it twists my perception.

It makes me exaggerate the future to the proportions of an atom bomb detonation. Fuck curiosity, anticipation killed the cat.

That doesn’t make sense?

I don’t give two shits. I went to sleep at five thirty A.M and it is now 8.A.m and I was woken up by someone who doesn’t know how to respect other people by slamming my door against the wall and screaming about dishes.

You see I have a bad habit of snaking in the middle of the night. I will eat everything and anything and sometimes I use multiple dishes. It’s horrible. I don’t usually take them from my room until early morning. This morning I did so and one plate had syrup on it from some waffles. I was rinsing it off when my dad said he’d “take care of it if I wanted” so I left it in the sink.

Now here he comes slamming my door against the wall screaming about the dishes I didn’t rinse off. The dishes he said he didn’t mind taking care of, because he was doing them anyway. Those dishes.

Then he turns up the stereo in the living room and sings at the top of his lungs.

Disrespect.

So it’s 8.a.m now and I’m having fun with my subwoofer and I give zero fucks if any of my metaphors make sense in this post.

If you don’t have social anxiety as a disorder than you probably don’t catch the jist of what I mean by anticipation killed the cat. I’ll give you a few examples.

When I first started high school, before I ever knew my behavior had a special name or label I took an Earth Science class full of freshman, sophomores, juniors and seniors. The syllabus said there was a presentation project due at the end of the year.

I spent each night thinking about that project. Most nights were spent crying about it and similar things, and the few nights I didn’t cry I just destroyed the last bit of my confidence and self-esteem by berating myself because I felt guilty I couldn’t be like the other kids.

My teacher happened to have me in a college prep class as well and when we did mandala projects and mine was rather dark and disturbing (I swear I hadn’t planned it that way) he realized there were reasons for my silence and if not my silence, at least for my odd demeanor. He always asked how I was and always made conversation with me. When I showed up in the science class with a project at the end of the year, he stared and said “Oh, you actually have one?”

I said yep and I did that fucking presentation and it was one of the worst experience of my life and at the end of the year when grades closed I saw on my report that teacher gave me a massive amount of extra credit points.

So I got special treatment in the end. But the year up until that date was torture; it was on my mind every day, every moment, along with all the other horrible social things I was forced to do in that educational prison. This was before I researched my own symptoms and realized I had a problem that could be coped with better than how I was coping.

I won’t go into detail about the four years it took to convince my mother I was suffering.

Being in the advanced classes with all the rich white kids talking about their summer trips to Paris didn’t help either. There’s no equality in these schools. Hispanics are encouraged into the college prep classes (no, in my town they’re not the minority so stop), white kids are encouraged into the advanced classes, and the rest of us? If we look Hispanic we’re lucky enough to get into the college prep (my life story) but if not you’re fucked. They’ll preach “no kid left behind” and then choose specific ones to leave behind.

Why was I in the advanced classes? Because I knew my brain and I knew I wouldn’t survive in the regular classes. I’d blow them off.

What I’ve learned is people love words. They love words that make them sound good and smart. But their words are never backed up by intention or action. I hate when people say “well, the intentions were good.”

The intentions can’t be good when they’re lying through their teeth. The intentions can’t be good when they’re an illusion. That invalidates their intentions.

Anyway, anticipation of social events is always worse than the actual event. Always. I know this and yet I still get that bubbling pit of uncertainty and overwhelming despair in my stomach. Where am I going to sit this week? I don’t want to come in between people’s friendships so I should get their early and let everyone sit around me who wants to. But if I get there early I risk having to have a conversation with the professor, or rather sit there awkwardly and try to shove words from my mouth like a toddler with two tongues. When people start filing in the classroom I’ll have to glance at them and feel like an idiot when they look away quicker than I do–did I do something wrong? On my face? My expression? They just know how uncomfortable I am and it’s the end of the semester now, they already know how odd I am. When no one sits next to me–oh shit, I’m going to be stuck at this table by myself of course, I’m the outcast as usual. Great. Jolly. Look how stupid I look.

It’s just constant scrutiny of one particular moment in time. It replays over and over and the closer it gets to the date the stronger it gets. That’s when the urges come. The urges to skip class or weasel my way out of something surge. Sometimes I give in, other times I don’t. Sometimes I have to lie, sometimes not. When I’m at that seemingly uncontrollable level of anxiety I will manipulate whoever I have to in whatever way possible to make sure I don’t have to leave this room. I know how lies work. They’re powerful.

It’s like an addiction; it is an addiction.

Anticipation is one thing, but then you have to deal with the borderline paranoia. At least, I do. When I’m in a room of people I’m convinced without a doubt people talk about me. I’ve said this before. I keep saying it because it’s one of the hardest things I’ve had to deal with in my social anxiety.

I know they talk about me. I know they ask each other why I am the way I am (I guess I think I present myself differently than others and I probably do) and I know they ask each other why I’m such an arrogant, rude, prick. I know one of the women in my classes, the one who stares–I know damn well she has something to say about me to her fucking friends. I believed she’d read this blog and if I’m being 100% honest, I’m still not convinced she hasn’t.

I see disgust and judgment in expressions that aren’t there. I see it and I feel it and I can’t help but fall to the feet of it. I hear lies in their words and their tone and I trust no one. Why would I have a reason to? I know I’m seen as lazy and stupid and a coward to be sitting in my room all day like there’s something physically wrong with me, like I have a real reason to be housebound, and when I ask people if that’s what they think and they look at me with that bewilderment in their eyes and their voice I know they’re lying.

It’s uncomfortable to walk outside or be outside or be around people. Yes, I cope, yes I push myself out of my comfort zone but most days I appreciate the fact that I can snuggle in this fuzzy robe and not have to say a word to any stupid fucker for days upon days.

This semester has been a rollercoaster in a horror game. My moods were all over the place but for the last month and a half they seem to have been quelled by something. The calm before the storm? A result of all the work I’ve been putting into my mental health over the last two years?

I don’t know.

I do know last week I had enough confidence to speak with my group and share ideas. This week, because I am now running on two and a half hours of sleep, I give zero fucks about all of them. Zero fucks. Don’t look at me, don’t talk to me, and don’t you dare try to talk to me in baby voice or act like you know what I go through just because you were “shy” in elementary school.